Clinging to the Doctrine

"I've often thought, and I've said to my own children, that those parents who kept going past Chimney Rock and Martin's Cove (and some didn't get farther than that) and those little graves that are dotted all across the historic landscape of this church--they didn't do that for a program, they didn't do it for a social, they did it because the faith of the gospel of Jesus Christ was in their soul, it was in the marrow of their bones. That's the only way those mothers could bury that baby in a breadbox and move on and say 'The promised land is out there somewhere. We're going to make it to the valley.'

"Well thats because of covenants and doctrine and faith and revelation and spirit. If we can keep that in our families and in the Church, maybe a lot of other things start to take care of themselves. Maybe a lot of other things sort of fall off the wagon. I'm told those handcarts could only take so much. They had to choose what they took. And maybe the 21st century will drive us to decide, 'what can we put in this handcart?' It's the substance of our soul; it's the stuff right down in the marrow of our bones. We'll have blessed family and church if we can cling to the revelations."

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, World Wide Leadership Training Meeting; Building up a Righteous Posterity, Roundtable Discussion, section "Clinging to the Doctrine"